Miami County residents' memories of the Blizzard of 1978

Friday, January 25, 2008

I was a senior attending Peru High School in January of 1978. I was living with my brother in Bunker Hill at the time. He worked at Essex Wire and we would have to come into town on Strawtown Pike very early every morning. The snow drifts on Strawtown Pike were so high on each side of the road, we literally drove through a "snow tunnel" to get into town.

We were stranded in the house for about a week. There were five of us in the house that smoked cigarettes. We ran out of cigarettes and went around to the ashtrays collecting old cigarettes. We would gather all of the "unused" tobacco and put them on one plate. We rolled our own cigarettes with this tobacco and shared the homemade cigarettes. Thank God I broke that nasty habit years ago.

The snow and drifts in front of my brother's house were so high that it came well above the top of the first story windows. My nephews and I would climb out of the second story windows, climb onto the top of the house and jump into the snow drifts.

I didn't think we would ever see the green grass again.

- Cindy Ridenour

I remember the blizzard of 1978 very well.

I was working at Reed Tool and Die, which was in Kokomo. Thankfully, I did not get stuck at work. I lived at 503 W. Fifth in Peru and I got stuck at home.

The neighbors, Bob Morris, Dick Mckinley, John Waltz and I worked to dig out our corner at Fifth and Brownell. They are all gone now and I live out here east of Deedsville. I never saw so much snow at one time in my life.

- Don DeWald

During the Blizzard of '78, my husband, young daughter, Jennifer, and I were living in Fairborn, Ohio, happily anticipating the birth of our second child.

I'm from Green Bay, Wisconsin, so the idea of heavy snow didn't bother me that much. My hubby, from Western Pennsylvania, promptly went out and bought us a snow shovel. I laughed at the curved, lightweight thing he called a snow shovel, and sent him back to buy a real snow shovel, before the predicted heavy snowstorm hit in mid-February, 1978.

Even nine months pregnant, I got out and tried to shovel the feet of snow we got with the big storm. My neighbor in our mobile home park, Mary Jo, was furious that I would even try in my delicate condition, but my husband was at work, and the base plows were busy taking care of the runway and the primary mission routes.

Mary Jo called the emergency number for the base, and told them, “My neighbor is going to have a baby any minute and you'd better get someone out here right away to plow us out!!” I told her that that was silly, that I wasn't even due for nearly a month. But the street was cleared less than a half-hour later. It was an amazing sight!

And Daniel turns 30 on March 14th.

- Mary Revelant

Peru

I was 8 years old and I remember going to school like normal that day.

I attended fourth grade at Lincoln Elementary (now Lincoln Apartments).

What I mostly remember is my dad walking to the school to get me when they decided to release school. We only lived about one block north and half a block east on West Fifth Street at the time. My father even had to bring me a heavier winter coat and boots since they were not needed that morning. He got me bundled up and took my hand and we walked home.

I remember just closing my eyes and letting him lead the way because it was blowing so hard I couldn't see anything if I tried to open my eyes. We had just moved to Peru on July 4th, 1977 from New York state and our family and friends teased that we brought it with us!!

After that, I remember being out of school for like two weeks (woo-hoo!!) and we had a HUGE snow pile by a tree by our house from the plowing and all of us kids in the neighborhood would slide down it.

- Keri (Donaldson) Davies

My mother's father died and we were at the viewing when my mother became ill and could not move.

My two brothers made a chair of their arms and carried her out to the car and took her to Dukes. She was in intensive care for almost a week and then transferred to Memorial Hospital in Indy. They told us she had a blood clot on the brain and was dying and needed surgery immediately; of course it was risky and she stood a chance of dying during the surgery.

My father and the three of us told them to go ahead. All went well and she did remarkably well.

We had been staying with friends in Indy and the day she got out of the hospital, we decided to stay in Indy for a couples of days, just to be close in case she had a set back. When we went to bed that night we knew we would wake up to snow, but boy did we wake up to snow. So, my parents, my brothers and their wives and myself were stuck in Indy about three days longer than we had planned.

Our families were here in Peru with other family members and we were there. But we had our beloved mother with us. Mom and Dad are both gone now, but my brothers and I and our families will never forget the blizzard of 1978 and the beginning of a horrid New Year but how we also drew together as a family and found love and strength from each other.

That`s how my brothers and I remember the blizzard of 1978 and our wonderful parents.

- M. Helen Wilcox

I was nine months pregnant on the 22nd of January. On the 25th I was three days late. My dad worked for the Miami County Highway Department. He told me that there was 18-foot drifts, and about 12 to 15 inches of snow. People that needed to go to the hospital had to ride on snowmobiles and in Jeeps.

When my dad was pulling away to go to work at 1 a.m. on January 29th, my water busted. I had to call my brother to get his girlfriend's father to pick my mom and I up and we had to go pick up my grandma on East Third Street. When we were walking out to the car the snow was six or seven foot high.

Then we went to Dukes Memorial Hospital. And I had a baby boy 10 hours later and his name is Tyrone Travis Ray (now Tyrone Travis Woodhouse).

- Terri L. Sullivan

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